calendario eventi  :: 

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29/1/2004

Diaspora

Karen Schreiber Gallery, Toronto

(Performance Art Event)
Featuring: Kinga Araya, Constanza Camelo, Flutura and Besnik Haxhillari, Myriam Laplante and Vessna Perunovich
Curated by Sonia Pelletier

Toronto... Fado is pleased to present DIASPORA, a performance art event that examines the experiences of dispersed and exiled populations. The event will feature five performances followed by a public discussion. DIASPORA presents artists from various cultures, now living in Canada, whose performances consider their 'foreignness'. Developed by Montreal curator Sonia Pelletier and touring with support from CALQ, DIASPORA features performances modified from an initial event presented in 2003 at Galerie Clark in Montreal. A fifth project featuring local artist Vessna Perunovich will be included for this Toronto version of DIASPORA.

Sonia Pelletier writes in consideration of the project:
Performance art [ is ] surely the most immediately expressive way to depict survival, resistance and the accommodation of differences. This commingling, driven by the artists' concerns with identity issues, leads us to consider how the precarious state of the artist in a foreign land reverberates on one's own culture, as well as the status of the artist in general. ...

A major portion of the project is devoted to reflection, with a focus on the identity issues of cultural transformation, hybrid cultures, belonging and cultural transference. ... We are also attempting to refashion and re-view the word 'Diaspora.' Performative acts convey cultural evidence, but to what extent can one assert one's belongingness in a world so polarized between Western and non-Western culture? And in the art world, haven't the concepts of globalization and internationalization gotten confused as well?

About the artists

An artist originating from Poland, Kinga Araya has lived and worked in the Quebec area (Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal) since 1990. She has participated in several installation exhibitions, video festivals and performance events in Canada and abroad. Her most recent work addresses the themes of travel and communication. She attempts to examine her nomadic and evolving identity, usually in the context of geopolitical/cultural issues. Questions such as, "Who am I?" and "Why am I where I am?" make up her artistic language. "The phenomenon of walking ad talking in between diverse cultures, countries and languages became a condition sine qua non of my artistic practice. I often question my belonging to one group or the other I encounter during my journeys. How much of my 'self' is still 'Polish' and how much has already become 'Canadian'? I believe that the driving force behind my art works lies in an impossible desire to be in total control of who I am and who I would like to become."

Constanza Camelo, an artist from Columbia, has lived and worked in Quebec (Quebec City and Montreal) since 1994. She has enacted many performances alone and in collaboration with James Partaik here and abroad. Her early performances examined the hybrid cultural identity of her native culture. She has been especially concerned with the subject of Colombian independence as a Spanish colony and its dependence as a neocolony. Later, she turned her attention to the notions of private and public space, with a particular concentration on street performance. Her performative work has evolved into creations of utopian territories, using a language composed of expression of change and ephemerality. Her work is therefore transient and consists of performance happenings: utopian territories furtively occupied, in a landscape of gestures and moments that replaces the landscape of permanent objects. Her body is in transit.

Flutura and Besnik Haxhillari are two artists from Albania have been established in Quebec (Montreal) since 1999. Under the name "Deux Gullivers" (Two Gullivers), they have created numerous performances and installations, mostly abroad. They adopted their name in 1998. It represents both a concept and a hybrid being born of an artistic relationship, and it evokes a spirit of collaboration. The dual adventure has continued ever since -- an investigation of the complexity and fragility of identity in the process of self-discovery. Through a variety of methods of self-representation and stagings of their personal concerns, they strive to respond to the challenging question "Who am I?" They alternate between the 'performative', 'installation' and 'media' modes. The "Gulliver" concept is reflected in the recurrent themes of travel, emigration and relocation. The journey may be undertaken in different forms, real or imaginary.

Born in Bangladesh, Myriam Laplante has lived and worked in Italy (Rome and Assisi) since 1985. Her installations ad photography have bee shown in numerous galleries in Europe and the United States. She has also put on many performances starting in 1992. Situated somewhere between humorous fiction and self-reference, Laplante's work makes use of portraits, masks, costumes and body enactments. Through loss of control and melancholy, Myriam Laplante expresses her concept of the temporality of identity.

Originally from the former Yugoslavia, Vessna Perunovich has lived and worked in Toronto, Canada since 1988. Her work has been shown nationally and internationally, most recently at the XII Biennial of Cerveira in Portugal, Second Tirana Biennial in Albania and 8th Havana Biennial in Cuba. Her sculptural installation, video and performative work explores her personal experience of immigration and displacement in addressing the issues of borders, exile and longing. Tension, which is a constant in her work both formally and conceptually, is essential to maintain the balance between subjection and empowerment, vulnerability and resilience. Perunovich's work reflects on the pressures and ironies found in the opposing but interconnected forces, where conscious meets unconscious, personal meets social and illusion meets reality. Her most recent performance project Transitory Places which traveled to England, Portugal, Italy and Cuba explores the notion of home and one's sense of belonging, as well as the utopian dream of a perfect place and disillusion that lays in the pursuit of that ideal.

January 30, 2004, 8 pm

Presented in cooperation with Blank Slate with support from the Conseil des art et des lettres du Québec
PWYC (suggested donation $5)

Contact (media and public): Paul Couillard (416) 822-3219

DISASPORA will also be in Hamilton on Thursday, January 29, 2003 at the Staircase Café & Theatre under the auspices of the Art Gallery of Hamilton. For details contact Katja Canini, (Acting) Media Programmer, at (905) 527-6610 ext. 257

Fado is pleased to acknowledge the Canada Council, the Ontario Arts Council, the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council, and the Department of Canadian Heritage for their support of our ongoing activities. This project also received touring funding from the Conseil des des arts et des lettres du Quebec.

"Art is the demonstrated wish and will to resolve conflict through action, be it spiritual, religious, political, personal, social or cultural." Alastair MacLennan

@ Karen Schreiber Gallery (25 Morrow Ave., #302)

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